First Cross-Country Tesla Trip Takes Less Than a Week, Costs $0

Tesla's current Supercharger network gets you across the country for free. Image: Tesla

It turns out you can drive across the country in an electric vehicle using only Tesla’s Supercharger stations to keep going. That assumes you really, really, want to go through South Dakota. But that’s exactly what a father-daughter team did Saturday.

John Glenney, a 62-year-old Model S owner, and his 26-year-old daughter Jill left New York earlier this month with the hope that all of the Supercharger stations they’d need to complete the trip would be up and running for their trip. They were, and the duo landed in Los Angeles this weekend.

Tesla currently has 71 Supercharger stations installed throughout the country, and while the most direct route from New York to Los Angeles would be a little over 40 hours, based on the placement of Superchargers, it would take nearly 60 hours to make it from coast to coast, not including the time it takes to charge at each station. John and Jill did it in under a week, leaving New York January 20 and arriving on the 26th, using 28 Supercharger stations to keep the wheels turning.

The Supercharger path will get less circuitous later this year as Tesla expands the network to include stretches of I-70 through Kansas. If Tesla makes good on CEO Elon Musk’s grand plan, 98 percent of the country will be within driving distance of a Supercharger station by 2015.